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As many first-year students
come to college, they hear
from their doctors, family and
friends that they should get a
meningitis vaccination. But
few actually know what
meningitis is.
This ignorance can be dead-ly,
as college students are six
times more likely to become
infected with meningitis than
other people.
Meningitis is a serious,
sometimes fatal, infection
causing inflammation of the
membranes that protect the
brain and spinal cord. Viral
meningitis infections, the most
common form, can usually be
resolved without treatment.
Bacterial infections are much
more serious and can result in
death, brain damage or limb
loss, even when treated.
Anyone can contract the dis-ease,
but it is more common
for the age groups five and
under, 16 to 25 and over 55. In
addition to this, there is no reg-ular
season for people to have
meningitis.
Symptoms include sudden
fever, headache, stiff neck,
vomiting, nausea and sleepi-ness.
Up to 10 percent of all
cases are fatal. But only 3,000
cases are reported per year, so
meningitis is not a common
form of infection.
A government panel has rec-ommended
that all college
freshmen who live in dorms
should be vaccinated for
meningitis. A new vaccine,
Menactra, produced by Sanofi
Pasteur, made this reccommen-dation
feasible.
This new vaccine is effective
for more than eight years, as
opposed to the three to five
years of the old vaccine. Also,
while the old vaccine did not
prevent carrying of the disease,
the new one does.
Illinois Wesleyan does not
currently require students to
have the meningitis vaccine
before entering school, but it is
recommended. Despite the
government panel’s recom-mendation,
it could be some
time before IWU’s policy
changes.
"Every year the policy is re-evaluated,
and it usually takes
a couple of years for something
like this to change. It's possible
it will change in the future, but
Rafael Saumell Muñoz was a
criminal. He was imprisoned
for nearly five years, during
which time he was allowed two
visitors a year and given the
chance to walk outside only
once a week. His two children,
six years old and two months
old, weren't allowed to see him.
His crime? Publishing a book
of short stories.
Muñoz, a Cuban accused of
spreading “enemy propaganda”
in his native country, spoke Feb.
17 in Illinois Wesleyan's
Beckman Auditorium about his
experience as a political prison-er
there. A group of about 50
students and faculty attended
the event.
For the Cuban government,
“my stories were politically
incorrect,” Muñoz said. The
once-successful radio and tele-vision
producer lost his job, was
separated from his family and
was incarcerated for four and a
half years. He was released in
1986.
“I became an ungrateful child
of the revolution,” he said. “I
became a traitor.”
The Cuban government did
not approve of Muñoz's book,
which he classifies as “counter-revolutionary
short stories,”
covering topics of dual morality,
invasion of privacy and immi-gration.
“I was very stupid” not to
expect prison time, he said. “I
guess that I put dynamite on my
own back.”
Muñoz recalled a television
interview he conducted just
before he was accused by the
government. While interview-ing
a senior Communist party
member, he began questioning
himself.
“Why can't I be like him?
Content?” he said. “Why do I
have dissident ideas? Why
should I sacrifice my wife and
children? Why should I lose my
job?”
Muñoz's arrest came after one
of his friends turned out to be a
police informant -- what he calls
“the most despicable form” of
the government's attacks on its
own citizens.
After his release from prison,
Muñoz continued to work
against the Cuban government
by contacting foreign journalists
and diplomats. The government
-- which banned independent
media, speaking against govern-ment
leaders, freedom of the
press and any political parties
other than the national
Communist party -- did not
arrest Muñoz again but instead
attempted to blackmail him.
Muñoz believes that the abili-ty
to express ideas is essential.
The pink army men from last
year have almost completely
disappeared from the Illinois
Wesleyan campus. However,
this year's Gender Issues Week
is fast approaching to provide
the Illinois Wesleyan
Community with new topics of
conversation.
Student Senate has taken note
of last year's successes and
weaknesses and has finalized
their plans for this year's events.
Student Senate member
Alyssa Stone said, “I think
every year we build upon the
experiences form past events. It
is always best to listen to what
students want to see, and I defi-nitely
used the feedback I
received from last year's Gender
Issues Week to start this year's.”
“Last year, through just
chance, all of the events and
projects were heavily female-issue
oriented. This year there
is more variety of topics, so
hopefully, more people can be
reached,” Stone said.
Student Senate has once again
called on the help of various
groups and departments within
the school.
“This is an event for the
whole campus, not one group in
particular. I tried to get input
from other groups on campus to
help make them more involved
so they have a sense of owner-ship
in the week,” Student
Welfare and Human Relations
Commissioner Melissa
Koeppen said.
This year, IWU Pride Alliance
is helping to facilitate the “How
Do You View Gender?” discus-sion,
and Michael Theune,
assistant professor of English, is
doing a free-write portion of
that event.
Kappa Pi is once again doing
an art installation on the quad.
APO is also assisting with a
philanthropic effort throughout
the week. There will be a bake
sale and toy donation drive that
will benefit the Boys and Girls
Club of Bloomington-Normal,
as well as a donation jar at each
event.
The Boys and Girls Club was
chosen as the beneficiary
because Student Senate saw
them as a group of people who
will be exploring gender issues
in the future.
The week’s keynote speaker,
Elizabeth Birch, will speak on
current lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender issues.
Birch began serving as the
executive director of the Human
Rights Campaign in 1995, and
since then, the organization has
grown from 100,000 members
to 500,000 members. HRC's
Political Action Committee has
At the Shirk Center this past
Sunday, the sound heard on the
courts was not that of a roaring
crowd or a scoreboard timer.
Instead, it was a message of
diversity and multicultural
awareness for the Illinois
Wesleyan community.
Sunday, Feb. 20 was the
annual Soul Food Dinner where
patrons feasted on chicken and
ribs during a presentation by
Mohammed Bilal and Josh
Goldstein.
Bilal and Goldstein formed
Orange Flash, an underground
hip-hop group, in 1997. Bilal is
most commonly recognized
from MTV's “The Real World:
San Francisco” with his infa-mous
housemate Puck.
Goldstein has been rapping for
more than 14 years and has
toured with multiple artists.
They shared stories about
their friendship and how it
formed, given that Bilal is
Muslim and Goldstein is
Jewish. The basis of their
friendship, they explained, is
their appreciation of rap and
hip-hop. They performed their
entire speech in a rap format.
The evening opened with an a
capella performance by a Black
Student Union group that calls
themselves “The Ladies.” This
was directly followed by Bilal
and Goldstein's unique presen-tation.
T h e i r
speech was
broken up
into what
Bilal and
Goldstein
referred to
as “10
t o o l s . ”
The tools
can be
used to
build a
friendship
with a person of a different cul-ture.
“We looked at our lives and
said, 'What made us friends?'”
Bilal said.
The first three tools were:
know yourself, try not to judge
and take a chance. Bilal and
Goldstein recommended that
students take a chance and do
something out of the ordinary at
least once a month.
The fourth tool, common
interest, is what Bilal calls “the
big one.” He brought two
Illinois Wesleyan students to the
stage and had them act out a
scene in which they would find
common interests to talk about.
Bilal also took this opportuni-ty
to talk to the audience about
the difficulty many people have
with discussing ethnicity.
The remaining tools included
interaction, cultural understand-ing,
time, boundaries, showing
humanity and, lastly, laughing
and having fun.
Bilal and Goldstein recom-mended
that a person take at
least three weeks of spending
one-on-one time with a person
while showing them enough
respect to research their culture.
In talking about mental
boundaries, Bilal said “We don't
have physical boundaries any-more,
and we're still separated.”
“I really like their creative
and informative technique to
emphasize how important it is
that we should take the time to
understand each other and not
simply judge at face value,”
sophomore Andy Hall said.
“I've never seen anything like
it, and likely never will again”
first-year student Rachel
Halfpap said.
Planning for the soul food
dinner got off to a rocky start.
The originally scheduled speak-er,
Malcom Jamal Warner of
Cosby Show fame, dropped out.
This left then-Issues and
Programming Commissioner,
Jessica Lothman, scrambling to
find a replacement. As it turned
out, she found two.
The current Student Senate
Issues and Programming
Commissioner, Salman Khan,
was pleased with Lothman's
choice and the night as a whole.
He was impressed with the
SPORTS, PAGE 10
Women grab No. 3 seed
in CCIW Tournament
Galleries showcase
students’ artwork
First Class
Permit 30
THEARGUS Illinois Wesleyan University
A
FEBRUARY 25, 2005
VOLUME 111 ISSUE 18 FEATURES, PAGE 3
Hip-hop group shares message of unity
Recovering alcoholics
offended by “Sideways”
OP/ED, PAGE 6
Weekend We a t h e r
Sunday
High: 42 Low: 31
Partly cloudy
Courtesy of www.weather.com
High: 46 Low: 33
Mostly cloudy
Saturday
Panel says meningitis
vaccination important
Performers Josh Goldstein and Mohammed Bilal rap during the Soul Food Dinner last Sunday.
ABBY MOHAUPT/THE ARGUS
Junior Laurie Couch has her blood drawn last week at IWU’s
blood drive in the Hansen Student Center.
TYLER SMITH/THE ARGUS
Gender Issues Week to
target men and women
Former Cuban political
prisoner speaks at IWU
seeSOUL FOOD p.2
seeGENDER ISSUES p.2
seeMENINGITIS p.2
seeMUNOZ p.2
E R I C J O H N S O N
S TA F F W R I T E R
SA L M A N
K A H N
S A R A N O VA K
S TA F F W R I T E R
L E Z L I C R O N E
S TA F F W R I T E R
S A R A H Z E L L E R
S TA F F W R I T E R
Director of Health Services Dolores Helm works in Arnold Health Center. If an IWU student has
not been vaccinated for meningitis and wants the shot, they can receive it at Health Services
for $53. NATALIE PAWLUK/THE ARGUS

Argus issues published from 1894-Spring 2003 were scanned at 600 dpi on a NM1000-SS scanner by Northern Micrographics, La Crosse, Wisconsin. Fulltext OCR was accomplished by the same company in Summer 2009. Issues published from the fall of 2003-present are born-digital.

Please email Tate Archives at archives@iwu.edu or call 309-556-1535 for more information. Permission to reproduce these images must be granted by IWU.

Full Text

As many first-year students
come to college, they hear
from their doctors, family and
friends that they should get a
meningitis vaccination. But
few actually know what
meningitis is.
This ignorance can be dead-ly,
as college students are six
times more likely to become
infected with meningitis than
other people.
Meningitis is a serious,
sometimes fatal, infection
causing inflammation of the
membranes that protect the
brain and spinal cord. Viral
meningitis infections, the most
common form, can usually be
resolved without treatment.
Bacterial infections are much
more serious and can result in
death, brain damage or limb
loss, even when treated.
Anyone can contract the dis-ease,
but it is more common
for the age groups five and
under, 16 to 25 and over 55. In
addition to this, there is no reg-ular
season for people to have
meningitis.
Symptoms include sudden
fever, headache, stiff neck,
vomiting, nausea and sleepi-ness.
Up to 10 percent of all
cases are fatal. But only 3,000
cases are reported per year, so
meningitis is not a common
form of infection.
A government panel has rec-ommended
that all college
freshmen who live in dorms
should be vaccinated for
meningitis. A new vaccine,
Menactra, produced by Sanofi
Pasteur, made this reccommen-dation
feasible.
This new vaccine is effective
for more than eight years, as
opposed to the three to five
years of the old vaccine. Also,
while the old vaccine did not
prevent carrying of the disease,
the new one does.
Illinois Wesleyan does not
currently require students to
have the meningitis vaccine
before entering school, but it is
recommended. Despite the
government panel’s recom-mendation,
it could be some
time before IWU’s policy
changes.
"Every year the policy is re-evaluated,
and it usually takes
a couple of years for something
like this to change. It's possible
it will change in the future, but
Rafael Saumell Muñoz was a
criminal. He was imprisoned
for nearly five years, during
which time he was allowed two
visitors a year and given the
chance to walk outside only
once a week. His two children,
six years old and two months
old, weren't allowed to see him.
His crime? Publishing a book
of short stories.
Muñoz, a Cuban accused of
spreading “enemy propaganda”
in his native country, spoke Feb.
17 in Illinois Wesleyan's
Beckman Auditorium about his
experience as a political prison-er
there. A group of about 50
students and faculty attended
the event.
For the Cuban government,
“my stories were politically
incorrect,” Muñoz said. The
once-successful radio and tele-vision
producer lost his job, was
separated from his family and
was incarcerated for four and a
half years. He was released in
1986.
“I became an ungrateful child
of the revolution,” he said. “I
became a traitor.”
The Cuban government did
not approve of Muñoz's book,
which he classifies as “counter-revolutionary
short stories,”
covering topics of dual morality,
invasion of privacy and immi-gration.
“I was very stupid” not to
expect prison time, he said. “I
guess that I put dynamite on my
own back.”
Muñoz recalled a television
interview he conducted just
before he was accused by the
government. While interview-ing
a senior Communist party
member, he began questioning
himself.
“Why can't I be like him?
Content?” he said. “Why do I
have dissident ideas? Why
should I sacrifice my wife and
children? Why should I lose my
job?”
Muñoz's arrest came after one
of his friends turned out to be a
police informant -- what he calls
“the most despicable form” of
the government's attacks on its
own citizens.
After his release from prison,
Muñoz continued to work
against the Cuban government
by contacting foreign journalists
and diplomats. The government
-- which banned independent
media, speaking against govern-ment
leaders, freedom of the
press and any political parties
other than the national
Communist party -- did not
arrest Muñoz again but instead
attempted to blackmail him.
Muñoz believes that the abili-ty
to express ideas is essential.
The pink army men from last
year have almost completely
disappeared from the Illinois
Wesleyan campus. However,
this year's Gender Issues Week
is fast approaching to provide
the Illinois Wesleyan
Community with new topics of
conversation.
Student Senate has taken note
of last year's successes and
weaknesses and has finalized
their plans for this year's events.
Student Senate member
Alyssa Stone said, “I think
every year we build upon the
experiences form past events. It
is always best to listen to what
students want to see, and I defi-nitely
used the feedback I
received from last year's Gender
Issues Week to start this year's.”
“Last year, through just
chance, all of the events and
projects were heavily female-issue
oriented. This year there
is more variety of topics, so
hopefully, more people can be
reached,” Stone said.
Student Senate has once again
called on the help of various
groups and departments within
the school.
“This is an event for the
whole campus, not one group in
particular. I tried to get input
from other groups on campus to
help make them more involved
so they have a sense of owner-ship
in the week,” Student
Welfare and Human Relations
Commissioner Melissa
Koeppen said.
This year, IWU Pride Alliance
is helping to facilitate the “How
Do You View Gender?” discus-sion,
and Michael Theune,
assistant professor of English, is
doing a free-write portion of
that event.
Kappa Pi is once again doing
an art installation on the quad.
APO is also assisting with a
philanthropic effort throughout
the week. There will be a bake
sale and toy donation drive that
will benefit the Boys and Girls
Club of Bloomington-Normal,
as well as a donation jar at each
event.
The Boys and Girls Club was
chosen as the beneficiary
because Student Senate saw
them as a group of people who
will be exploring gender issues
in the future.
The week’s keynote speaker,
Elizabeth Birch, will speak on
current lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender issues.
Birch began serving as the
executive director of the Human
Rights Campaign in 1995, and
since then, the organization has
grown from 100,000 members
to 500,000 members. HRC's
Political Action Committee has
At the Shirk Center this past
Sunday, the sound heard on the
courts was not that of a roaring
crowd or a scoreboard timer.
Instead, it was a message of
diversity and multicultural
awareness for the Illinois
Wesleyan community.
Sunday, Feb. 20 was the
annual Soul Food Dinner where
patrons feasted on chicken and
ribs during a presentation by
Mohammed Bilal and Josh
Goldstein.
Bilal and Goldstein formed
Orange Flash, an underground
hip-hop group, in 1997. Bilal is
most commonly recognized
from MTV's “The Real World:
San Francisco” with his infa-mous
housemate Puck.
Goldstein has been rapping for
more than 14 years and has
toured with multiple artists.
They shared stories about
their friendship and how it
formed, given that Bilal is
Muslim and Goldstein is
Jewish. The basis of their
friendship, they explained, is
their appreciation of rap and
hip-hop. They performed their
entire speech in a rap format.
The evening opened with an a
capella performance by a Black
Student Union group that calls
themselves “The Ladies.” This
was directly followed by Bilal
and Goldstein's unique presen-tation.
T h e i r
speech was
broken up
into what
Bilal and
Goldstein
referred to
as “10
t o o l s . ”
The tools
can be
used to
build a
friendship
with a person of a different cul-ture.
“We looked at our lives and
said, 'What made us friends?'”
Bilal said.
The first three tools were:
know yourself, try not to judge
and take a chance. Bilal and
Goldstein recommended that
students take a chance and do
something out of the ordinary at
least once a month.
The fourth tool, common
interest, is what Bilal calls “the
big one.” He brought two
Illinois Wesleyan students to the
stage and had them act out a
scene in which they would find
common interests to talk about.
Bilal also took this opportuni-ty
to talk to the audience about
the difficulty many people have
with discussing ethnicity.
The remaining tools included
interaction, cultural understand-ing,
time, boundaries, showing
humanity and, lastly, laughing
and having fun.
Bilal and Goldstein recom-mended
that a person take at
least three weeks of spending
one-on-one time with a person
while showing them enough
respect to research their culture.
In talking about mental
boundaries, Bilal said “We don't
have physical boundaries any-more,
and we're still separated.”
“I really like their creative
and informative technique to
emphasize how important it is
that we should take the time to
understand each other and not
simply judge at face value,”
sophomore Andy Hall said.
“I've never seen anything like
it, and likely never will again”
first-year student Rachel
Halfpap said.
Planning for the soul food
dinner got off to a rocky start.
The originally scheduled speak-er,
Malcom Jamal Warner of
Cosby Show fame, dropped out.
This left then-Issues and
Programming Commissioner,
Jessica Lothman, scrambling to
find a replacement. As it turned
out, she found two.
The current Student Senate
Issues and Programming
Commissioner, Salman Khan,
was pleased with Lothman's
choice and the night as a whole.
He was impressed with the
SPORTS, PAGE 10
Women grab No. 3 seed
in CCIW Tournament
Galleries showcase
students’ artwork
First Class
Permit 30
THEARGUS Illinois Wesleyan University
A
FEBRUARY 25, 2005
VOLUME 111 ISSUE 18 FEATURES, PAGE 3
Hip-hop group shares message of unity
Recovering alcoholics
offended by “Sideways”
OP/ED, PAGE 6
Weekend We a t h e r
Sunday
High: 42 Low: 31
Partly cloudy
Courtesy of www.weather.com
High: 46 Low: 33
Mostly cloudy
Saturday
Panel says meningitis
vaccination important
Performers Josh Goldstein and Mohammed Bilal rap during the Soul Food Dinner last Sunday.
ABBY MOHAUPT/THE ARGUS
Junior Laurie Couch has her blood drawn last week at IWU’s
blood drive in the Hansen Student Center.
TYLER SMITH/THE ARGUS
Gender Issues Week to
target men and women
Former Cuban political
prisoner speaks at IWU
seeSOUL FOOD p.2
seeGENDER ISSUES p.2
seeMENINGITIS p.2
seeMUNOZ p.2
E R I C J O H N S O N
S TA F F W R I T E R
SA L M A N
K A H N
S A R A N O VA K
S TA F F W R I T E R
L E Z L I C R O N E
S TA F F W R I T E R
S A R A H Z E L L E R
S TA F F W R I T E R
Director of Health Services Dolores Helm works in Arnold Health Center. If an IWU student has
not been vaccinated for meningitis and wants the shot, they can receive it at Health Services
for $53. NATALIE PAWLUK/THE ARGUS